Howl
by poisons
Summary: The discovery of a dead newborn baby leads to an investigation of a creature much more horrific.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note**: **TRIGGER WARNING **for this chapter for mentions of stillbirth and miscarriage. Later chapters will have a trigger warning for rape. I didn't even think about adding one until a reviewer suggested it to me (thank you, onlyonechairleft!), and I'm sorry for any distress I might have caused!

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><p>Being out alone at night was the scariest part of moving to the city. Anna didn't know why the theatre couldn't have gotten their interns housing that was closer to their rehearsal space, but she knew that thinking like that wasn't going to change anything, so it was best to just do what she could to stay safe. Usually she would go home with her roommate Stacey but Stacey had decided to go out for drinks, leaving Anna all alone.<p>

She called her mom. Having something else to think about - not to mention someone on the other end of the phone in case someone decided to jump her - would ease her mind.

"Hey, Mom. What are you doing?"

"Nothing, baby. Just got off work. I hate the late shift on Friday nights, I always end up having to stay longer because of the idiots banging each other up with beer bottles and chairs. What are you still doing up? Don't you have rehearsal in the morning?"

"Yeah. I just got out of tonight's rehearsal too."

"Oh my god. I knew those bastards were gonna work you too hard, they always do to interns -"

"Mom, it's just tech week. I'm used to it," Anna was saying when she heard a growl nearby, in an alleyway. A dog lunged out at her. She swore, dropping her phone. She kicked at the dog, and it yelped and retreated off down a stairwell.

Anna picked up her phone, in time to hear her mother frantically asking if she was okay. "I'm fine, Mom, just a dog."

"Did he bite you?"

"Nah, he tried to, but I'm fine." She checked her legs to be sure he hadn't scratched her either, and as she did she caught sight of the garbage bag the dog had been rooting through. Poor thing was just defending the food it had found. That made her feel like crap - she'd never kicked a dog before - but she promptly forgot her guilt when she saw a small hand amongst the trash.

"Oh my god! Oh no. Oh no, Mom, I have to call you back."

"Honey, wait, are you alright?"

"There's a baby in the trash! I have to call the police!"

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><p>Doctor Melinda Warner had just finished making her last few notes on the dead infant when Detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler arrived on the scene. They ducked under the crime scene tape, Stabler holding it up for Benson, and walked briskly toward her. She didn't wait for them to engage in the usual "What've we got?" pleasantries and dove right in. "Deceased newborn baby girl, found in a garbage heap."<p>

"What the hell happened to her?" Elliot asked. His gut roiled as he knelt down to take a closer look at the baby. Her stomach had been torn open and her legs were slightly mangled. At one point in his life he might have wondered what kind of human being could do this to a child, but he'd known that answer for a long time. He dealt with that kind of human being every day.

"Hard to say. The woman who placed the 911 call found the girl after a stray dog had been chewing on her for a while. Cyanosis on the lips and fingers suggests stillbirth, but until I get her in the lab I can't rule out a homicide."

"Thanks, Melinda," Olivia said as Elliot stood up next to her. "We'll put out an alert to nearby hospitals for women reporting hemorrhaging or miscarriage." If it was a stillbirth as Melinda thought it might be, then the mother of this baby must be distraught and panicking to have dumped her like this. She hoped the woman would have gone to a hospital so she could get proper medical care and some counseling.

"I'll run her DNA when I get her to the lab to see if I can get a parental match on anyone in our system," Warner said.

Elliot nodded and said, "Alright. I have to appear in court in a few hours. Keep us posted?"

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><p>Olivia considered spending the last few hours of the night at the station house in the bunk room, but eventually decided that the time it would take to get back to her own bed was well worth it.<p>

The air was stuffy in her apartment. Summer was setting in. She turned on the ceiling fan in her bedroom and opened the window, but even though the breeze that drifted in was cool and pleasant, it was still difficult to breathe. She undressed, down to an undershirt and panties and lay on top of the bedclothes. As she lay in bed, she listened, like she often did, for errant noises.

_The sudden footfalls on the stairs outside her apartment shook the whole building. She hardly had time to react and take hold of her weapon before she heard her front door being ripped from its hinges, cast aside and crashing to the floor in the hallway. A shadow crossed her room, formless and terrifying. When it closed in on her, she felt impact from it, like two hands slamming into her chest, sending her falling backward onto her bed. She could only bear for a moment to look up at the shadow's pure blackness, now gaining a human shape, before her eyes closed and her mouth opened to scream._

The sweat running down her forehead dripped into her eyes, stinging and making them tear up. The monsters in her nightmares were normally more human-like. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the feeling of dread, trying to calm her jangled nerves. She steadied her hands, stretching her fingers until they stopped shaking. Her throat was parched, dried out after her desperate panting.

Everything in her apartment was exactly as it should be. Nothing tossed around, no evidence of the destruction that that creature must have left behind. As she went into the kitchen to pour a glass of water, she had to remind herself that it was only a nightmare, that she had no reason to be surprised at how normal things were. But there was something that was there that hadn't been before, something that made her skin crawl. The air around her still felt moist and muggy. A strange scent, like the scent of a struck match, hung in the air.

She closed her bedroom window and turned on the air conditioning. It seemed unlikely she would get back to sleep, but she went back to bed anyway. Exhaustion weighed her down, and she nearly collapsed back into her bed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **_I'm sorry that this is reading like an SVU episode in story form. Don't worry. The Winchesters will soon arrive and fuck up everyone's lives!_

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><p>Morning arrived and Olivia went into the precinct. The rest of the night passed by in a haze, a series of disjointed thoughts and half-remembered dreams. The result was a headache that rendered everything in sharp angles and harsh lights, so she chased some extra strength headache medicine down with her first cup of coffee.<p>

The alleyway where the victim had been found was between two restaurants, one of which had a camera at an angle that could have caught the person dumping the baby; across the street was a convenience store with a security camera which also had a view of the street. TARU had ordered the data from the cameras from the past 36 hours, since Warner hadn't yet been able to determine the exact time of death. Both cameras captured a woman staggering up to the alley, carrying a plastic grocery bag; the camera at the convenience store across the street recorded her bracing herself against a wall before burying the bag under some of the other garbage that was already in the alley. The restaurant's camera captured several seconds in which her face was in full view. Olivia ordered some printouts of the woman's face and posted them on the board and had the images sent to area hospitals, still hoping that she would seek some medical help for her own sake.

In those few seconds, the woman looked terrified. Olivia couldn't bear to look at her for long.

Soon after Elliot arrived, finished with his court appearance, the results on the baby's DNA came in, with a match. The girl's mother was a woman named Emily Saunders. She matched the description for the woman caught on the store and restaurant's security cameras.

"What's she in the system for?" Elliot asked after Olivia shared the results.

Olivia's heart sank. "She was a victim. Three years ago, she was assaulted outside a party at a friend's apartment."

"They catch the perp?"

"I don't know. It wasn't one of ours, it happened in Buffalo."

"Well, let's see if we can pay her a visit."

"Maybe she checked into a hospital since last night," Olivia said. "See if you can track down her address, and I'll call around."

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><p>Emily Saunders had not checked into a hospital last night, but they were able to find the brownstone she lived in. Elliot rapped briskly on the door to apartment 6D and looked over at Olivia. "Think she's home? She could be at work."<p>

"She just gave birth last night," Olivia replied. "She could barely walk when she left the baby in that alley. I don't think she could go to work if she wanted to."

Elliot's hardened facial expression didn't soften at all, and Olivia couldn't summon up the energy to remind him that they might have two victims here. They could - and probably would, she realized - argue about the girl's motives later, after they found her and interviewed her.

"Emily Saunders!" Elliot called, rapping on the door a little louder this time. "Police! We just need to talk to you!"

The doors and walls in the brownstone were thin; a man from the apartment next to Emily's emerged, concerned. "What's going on?"

"We're looking for Emily Saunders," Olivia told him. "Have you seen her recently?"

"Yeah, saw her last night, we were both coming in at the same time," the man replied. "She didn't look good. I asked her if she was okay, she said she was fine."

"Didn't look good? Did she look hurt?" Elliot asked.

"I don't know." He started to look uncomfortable and upset. "Did something happen to her?"

"That's what we're trying to find out, so if you know something, you need to tell us so we can get her some help," Olivia said.

He hesitated for a moment. "Our bedrooms share a wall. I heard her moaning and crying in the middle of the night. I figured it was just a nightmare but ..."

"But?" Olivia prompted him.

"She's been having a lot of those lately. She sounded different this time."

"She might need help," Olivia said, turning to Elliot. "We've got to get inside."

Elliot nodded and called out to Emily one more time before stepping back and kicking the door in. It gave way easily, cheap and weakened with age. "Emily?" Olivia called. "We're coming in." The two officers swept through the small apartment; Olivia noted several bloodstains on the hardwood floor and drew her weapon. "Elliot," she said, gesturing at the blood. He nodded; his weapon was also in his hand.

The bedroom door was closed but unlocked, and Emily was sprawled on the bed, face down. Elliot entered the room first, called her name again and turned her onto her back gently but urgently.

"She breathing?" Olivia asked as she reached the girl's bedside.

"Yeah," Elliot replied. "Shallow. Her pulse is weak."

"Is she okay?" the man from next door called into the apartment as Elliot began calling for EMS and CSU. Olivia kept the man, whose name was Ben, calm as they waited for help to arrive.

They were on the way to St. Catherine's when Warner called them, finished with her examination of the baby. Elliot dropped Olivia off at the hospital and went into Warner's office. He steeled himself, knowing that he could never be exactly prepared to look at a dead child. Melinda led him into the exam room and said, "Your victim never took a breath outside her mother's body."

"You called me in to tell me that?"

"Well, no," Melinda replied, stepping up to the exam table. "There's something odd about this one. Stillbirth means that the fetus is dead in utero, sometimes weeks before delivery. Blood flow stops and the blood that's in the body seeps down to the lowest points in the body because of gravity." Elliot wondered why she would be telling him all of this. Rookie cops knew this kind of stuff. Melinda pulled back the blue sheet covering the baby and Elliot's teeth clenched. She turned the baby onto her side, her back turned to Elliot. "There's no hypostasis. The victim was found supine, on an incline. The blood should have settled in the backs of her legs and feet." Elliot frowned. There were none of the usual purple discolorations anywhere on the girl's body.

"You're sure she never took a breath?" Elliot asked.

"The hydrostatic test on her lungs confirmed it. Twice. This girl bled out when that dog found her."

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><p>Olivia needed to distract herself from all her thoughts of finding an empty hospital bed and sleeping off her headache. She had been chewing on pain medicine on and off all day and so far nothing was working. She bought a cappuccino from one of the coffee machines in the hospital's cafeteria while she waited, and tried to get comfortable in the waiting room chairs which Olivia was certain were built specifically so that no human being could ever be comfortable in them.<p>

"Detective?" Dr. Wils, the attending physician, was standing in front of her.

"Oh. How is she, Dr. Wils?" Olivia asked. She frowned. She felt a little groggy and wondered if somehow she had fallen asleep.

"She's conscious now. We have her on a fluid drip and her blood pressure has stabilized. We had to sedate her when she woke up. She became upset when we told her what happened and she tried to escape."

"What's her diagnosis?"

"Exhaustion and complications from birth."

Emily was in tears when Olivia went in to speak to her.

"Emily, my name's Olivia Benson. I'm a detective with the NYPD. How are you feeling?"

Emily took one look at Olivia and buried her face in her hands. She took a breath and choked out a sob. "I'm ... I feel awful. Were you the one who found me?"

"Yes. Your neighbor told us he'd heard you crying last night. You sounded like you were in pain."

"Why were you looking for me anyway?"

It was probably for the best that Elliot wasn't here at the moment. He was unpredictable when it came to distraught suspects, even ones who might be victims themselves. She cleared her throat and said, "We found your baby."

Emily's jaw dropped. Her eyes were wide when she shook her head and replied, "I don't. I don't have a baby."

"We have you on two security cameras dropping the baby in a garbage heap and leaving her there. Her DNA shows that she's related to you. I just need to know what happened." Emily wouldn't say anything, only covered her face with her hands again and sobbed. Though it seemed useless, Olivia pressed on a bit more. "Can you tell us who the baby's father is?" The question only seemed to make Emily shut down completely. Her sobs were so violent now that she began to hyperventilate a bit. A nurse came into the room and asked Olivia to leave.

"We'll give you a call when she's ready to talk again," the nurse said, and Olivia left the room. Elliot was in the waiting room, and when she rounded the corner he stood up.

"We have another victim," he said. "And some weird shit's going on with the first one."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes:** This story takes place in early season 6 of the Supernatural continuity, with some references to that part of the S6 story arc but probably no episode-specific spoilers. I'll warn for spoilers if they come up. This chapter contains a semi-graphic description of a crime scene, with references to another infant death and murder victim, so **trigger warning** for that.

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><p>"So the baby girl was definitely a stillbirth, but her heart was beating when the dog attacked her?" Olivia said, more to herself than to Elliot. He had explained the situation to her when they left the hospital, en route to another crime scene.<p>

"That's the only way Warner can explain why there's no postmortem discoloration or why the baby would have bled so much."

"That makes absolutely no sense." Olivia could not wrap her brain around what Elliot had just told her. If the girl's heart was beating, then that meant she was born alive; but if she had never drawn a breath, how could that be possible?

"And is the new victim related to our first one?"

"Two of them, a mother _and _a baby. Munch thinks they're related. He called us in on it. He and Fin are on the scene now."

"Any details yet?"

"He didn't seem to want to say much over the phone. We're almost there."

"I guess we'll see," Olivia said, sounding gloomier than she meant to.

Elliot glanced over at her. "Hey," he said after a moment. "You feeling okay?"

"Fine," she replied.

"You look pale. Tired. You getting sick?"

"I don't think so. I just … had some trouble sleeping last night."

"What kind of trouble?" he asked, concern edging into his voice.

"Just … nightmares," she said, frowning and looking back at him. "The really vivid kind. I was fighting something that was attacking me. And whenever I woke up I could just _feel _the muscle fatigue."

"No wonder you're tired."

"Yeah."

"You need to take the rest of the day?"

She shook her head. How could she go home with three definite victims and Emily Saunders still in the hospital? No. With enough coffee and maybe some more Aleve she'd be able to power through the rest of the day, at least.

Munch and Fin were speaking to a witness when they arrived at the victim's apartment building. The woman was in tears, and the things she was saying were a rapid jumble of words.

"Ma'am, I need you to calm down," Fin said as Elliot and Olivia crossed the crime scene tape. Paramedics moved past them, wheeling two covered gurneys. Munch turned to them as Fin continued to talk to the woman.

"Angela Pettis, 26. Her friend -" here Munch pointed over to the woman whom Fin was still interviewing, "hadn't seen or heard from her for a few days, came over to check up on her. Found Angela in her bed, her newborn baby nearby."

"Think it's related to our other victim?"

"Warner thinks so. Said the baby was stillborn, like the other one, but bled out."

"Just like Emily Saunders' baby," Elliot said. "Only I don't see any dogs around."

Warner left the victim's bedroom and approached them. "No, but there is a stab wound, straight through the heart. I can't declare it the official cause of death just yet since this one was stillborn too." She paused, frowning down at her notes. She sighed and added, "I'll be able to confirm it once I get in the lab."

"What about her mother?" Olivia asked.

"I can't determine the mother's cause of death just yet. I'll let you know the results of the autopsy." She made her way past the detectives and out the door.

"Is the witness giving us anything?" Elliot asked Munch, looking over at the woman whose cries had calmed down.

"Hopefully. When we first got here all she could talk about was a man she saw who stabbed the baby and disappeared when she came into the apartment."

"Did he leave through the windows?" Olivia asked, alarmed, looking over at the windows in the living room. There was a fire escape, one could easily leave that way.

"No," Munch said. "Every window in the place was closed and locked. She kept saying he disappeared into thin air. Like a ghost."

From the looks on the faces of the men around her, Olivia could tell they were all thinking psych eval to determine if the woman was a reliable witness. She saw the same expression on Fin's face when he came over to them after he finished speaking to her. A vague sense of dread filled her. Two babies who died horrible deaths after they were supposedly born dead already. One dead mother, one still in the hospital. Her colleagues were alarmed but not to the extent that she herself was. There was something strange happening with this case, stranger even than the babies who had apparently died two deaths.

She was being paranoid. Her thoughts were becoming disorganized and incoherent. Maybe she should have taken the rest of the day after all.

The witness left with an EMT, and the SVU detectives were the only ones left standing in the living room. CSU techs were wrapping up in the bedroom.

"So?" Elliot said, breaking the silence between the four of them.

"So she stuck to her story," Fin replied, clearly frustrated. "She swears, hundred percent, that there was a man in here who killed the baby right in front of her, then turned to look at her and disappeared. The only thing she wasn't sure about was whether he killed Angela too."

"Think she could have been involved?"

Fin shook his head. "No blood spatter on her clothes, no murder weapon anywhere on her or in the apartment. CSU took all the knives from the kitchen, but from the time of death to her 911 call wouldn't have been enough time to have done any kind of cleanup. She didn't do it."

"So our other alternative is some kind of ghost who kills babies and then disappears. Good," Elliot said, putting his hand to his forehead and rubbing it back over his hair.

"She was able to give us a description of the ghost, at the very least," Munch said, "although she didn't get enough of a glimpse to get us a reliable sketch. White, average height, mid-thirties. Dark hair, blue eyes, tan trenchcoat."

Elliot nodded and said, "We'll put out an alert."

"There is one more thing." Munch glanced over at Fin. Both men began to look extremely uncomfortable.

"What is it?" Olivia asked. She and Elliot followed Fin and Munch into the victim's bedroom. On the floor next to the bed where Angela Pettis' body had been found, was a wide circle painted onto the hardwood. Inside the circle were different symbols that Olivia had never seen before, between the spokes of a six-pointed star. Yellow evidence markers were placed on top of the symbol.

"What the fuck?" Elliot whispered, mouth agape.

"It's blood," Fin said quietly. Nodding toward the circle, he added, "The baby was in the center of that star when he was killed."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes: **Thanks for all the kind comments! I'm glad people are enjoying this ridiculous story.

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><p>Progress was difficult to come by on a case where the only witnesses were unable to give reliable statements and where there no potential leads. The blood used to paint the strange symbol on the floor of Angela Pettis' bedroom did not match either Angela or her baby, but the DNA wasn't in the system. Neither was the description of the man whom Angela's friend had seen. Cragen hated to go public with any case, but he saw no other option.<p>

"Could this be a case of ritual abuse?" the reporter from the Ledger asked Elliot.

"It's unlikely, but we're not ruling out any possibilities at the moment," he replied.

"Ritual abuse stories arose from a moral panic in the early 80s," Munch said after Elliot had told them about the interview. "There were no confirmed cases and most witness and victim statements resulted from the hysteria or came from people who craved the media attention."

"You think we'll get anywhere with the press?" Olivia asked.

"Dead babies sell a lot of papers," Fin said, "but even with the devil worship symbols or whatever the fuck they were, we'll be lucky if it makes the A section."

"You think?" Elliot asked.

"Our first case looks like Mom just panicked and threw her stillborn baby out with the trash, and we got nothing on the second one except a woman who swears she saw a ghost. Might be good for a slow news day but the gang shootout in Spanish Harlem's gonna make the front page."

Elliot scoffed, disgusted. The press vultures saw some more attractive carrion in Spanish Harlem. "So we need to go back to the leads we do have. Liv, you think you can go back to St. Catherine's, try to get something out of Emily Saunders?"

"I don't know what else she could give us, but I'll give it a shot," Olivia said.

"We'll work on our ghost whisperer," Munch said.

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><p>Olivia arrived at St. Catherine's only to be stuck in the waiting room again. When she asked about Emily and whether she had calmed down and could be questioned again, the nurse at the nurses' station said that they had upped the dosage of the sedatives they had put her on and it seemed to help.<p>

"Great," Olivia said. "Can I see her? I have a few more questions for her."

"You'll have to wait," Nurse Byron replied. "There's someone with her already."

"Who?" Olivia frowned.

"Couple of gentlemen who said they needed to speak to her. All I do is check their ID and sign 'em in, Detective. I'll let you know when you can see her."

As she sat and waited for Emily's visitors to leave, Olivia considered just heading home after she finished here. The chances were slim that some new development would occur tonight that would give them some kind of idea about the deaths of Angela and her baby. It had been a long day, and she would need to be alert and fully-functioning tomorrow if something came of the Ledger story.

Whoever Emily's visitors were, they didn't take long. Two men in dark suits rounded the corner into the waiting room and she assumed they were the ones talking to Emily. Nurse Byron peered around the corner and said, "She's all yours, Detective," and got back to work, not waiting for Olivia to respond. One of the men, the taller one, stopped when he heard this. He turned and looked back at Nurse Byron, then glanced at Olivia. Looking spooked, he hurried to catch up with the other man.

Something wasn't right about them. Olivia stood up and followed them through the halls a few paces back. The taller one pointed to the stairwell and they both started down the stairs.

"Hey!" Olivia called, and followed them through the doors. "Excuse me!"

Both men glanced at each other, and stopped and turned around. "Can we help you?" the shorter man asked, his voice deep and his tone terse.

"Yeah," Olivia said. "Were you in to see a woman named Emily Saunders?"

"We were."

"Can I ask what it was about?"

"You could," the man replied. He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a badge. "Agent Cantrell," he said, and then pointed to his partner, "Agent Staley. FBI. The details of our conversation with Ms. Saunders are privileged."

"Great," Olivia said, showing them her own badge. "Detective Benson, NYPD. I didn't know the Bureau was involved in this investigation. We're also investigating Ms. Saunders. Could we exchange some information?"

"I'm sorry," Agent Staley said. "Like Agent Cantrell said, our information is confidential. We're not trying to take over your case, we'll stay out of your way. We'd like to give you everything we have, but our supervisor told us it's need-to-know only."

"Really." Olivia crossed her arms. "Who's your SAIC?"

"Here, tell you what," Cantrell said, reaching into his inside jacket pocket again and producing a business card. "His name's Mike Kayser. Here's all his contact information. Give him a call."

"This says you two are based in South Dakota. You're way out of your jurisdiction," Olivia protested, but the two agents were already walking away from her, down the stairs.

"We've got two cases that we believe are related," Staley called back, stopping to look back up at her. "Like I said, we're not trying to get in your way. You probably won't even see us again."

Olivia exhaled roughly, frustrated. She put the business card in her own jacket pocket and headed back in to speak to Emily Saunders.

Emily definitely looked much less disturbed than she had earlier in the day. "Emily," Olivia said. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," she replied.

"I'm glad. I was really worried about you earlier. I'd like to ask you some questions, is that okay?"

"The two guys who were just in here already did."

"The FBI agents?"

Emily frowned. "I thought they were police officers."

"I asked them and they identified themselves as FBI agents. I'll try to make it short, okay?" Emily nodded. "Good. I know you're really upset by everything that's happened, and all I want to do is help you. Can you tell me who the father of your baby is?"

Emily sighed and looked down at her hands, and for a moment Olivia was afraid she was going to start crying again like she had before, but she only shook her head and said, "No. I don't know who it was."

"Okay, that's alright. Can you tell me who you've been intimate with recently who _could_ be the father?"

"I told the FBI agents," Emily replied, shaking her head again, more emphatic this time. "I swear. I haven't slept with _anyone_ in two years."

"But how could that be? You were pregnant."

Tears shone in the woman's eyes when she looked up at Olivia. "I swear to you. There hasn't been anyone."

Olivia reached over to put her hand on Emily's shoulder. "Emily. Is it possible that you were raped and that's why you don't remember getting pregnant?"

Emily put her hand to her mouth. "Oh god."

"What is it? Do you remember something?"

"I … I was having nightmares. Earlier this year. Of this man attacking me, over and over again, every night for weeks. It … it stopped. I started missing my period after that."

"Sometimes rapists drug their victims before they rape them. There are drugs that make it so that you can't remember anything at all. That could have happened to you. It could have been why you were having the nightmares."

"But I don't remember anything so what does it matter?"

"If you could just tell me anything you remember before the nightmares started, any blackouts you had, any men you were seeing or someone you spent time with -"

"There wasn't anyone!"

Olivia paused. "Emily, if you won't tell me anything, then there's nothing I can do to help you. You could be in a lot of trouble here for what happened to your baby and I want to prevent that if I can."

"What do you mean, what happened to my baby? She was dead when she was born and I just wanted her gone! I didn't know what to do so I … I got rid of her! I swear she was dead when she was born!"

"Excuse me," a woman's voice piped up from behind Olivia. "Are you trying to extract a confession from a woman who's obviously in emotional distress?"

"No, I'm just trying to -"

"It doesn't matter what you're trying to do. You're talking to her while she is a patient without her lawyer present." The woman turned to Emily and said, "Emily, I'm Ellen Klein, your attorney. Your parents have sent me to represent you." Barely glancing back at Olivia, Klein added, "You can go now, Detective."

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><p>"I didn't get much out of Emily," Olivia told Elliot over the phone as she sat in her car. "Two feds talked to her before I got there so she was already frustrated, and then by the time I started getting somewhere her lawyer kicked me out."<p>

"Feds?" Elliot repeated. "FBI were questioning her? They haven't contacted us at all."

"Yeah, two guys from South Dakota. Said they think two of their cases are related but they wouldn't tell me anything Emily had told them. Are you still at the precinct?"

"Yeah, give me their names."

"Staley and Cantrell." She pulled their supervisor's business card from her pocket and read him the man's contact information.

"I'll try pulling their records up. You coming back in?"

"No. I'm going to take the rest of the night."

"Good," Elliot said, his voice almost gentle. "You could use it. Get some rest."

"Thanks, El. Call me if anything comes up. I'll see you tomorrow."

By the time Olivia arrived at her apartment, the sun had set. She microwaved some leftover Pad Thai, sat on the couch, turned on the television, and promptly fell asleep.

She was startled awake by a thumping sound outside her door. She remained still, her eyes locked on the TV, ignoring the sound.

She put the food from the microwave back into the fridge. Got undressed. Put her weapon on the bedside table and lay down.

Woke up to the sound of babies crying and that same terrifying shadowy form on top of her. It was more real this time, she could _feel_ it. Holding her down, breath in her ear. Her legs wouldn't kick, her arms wouldn't move. Her eyes were open, staring up at it, so dark it looked like nothing but so real, so _there_, on top of her.

She heard a terrible keening sound. Realized it was her own voice.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes:** I'm going to be honest with you all. I started writing this story just so I could see Elliot tormenting Dean. References to rape in this chapter.

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><p>Sam's bitchface was turned up to eleven. They were too reckless in going to talk to Emily Saunders, he'd said, and they should have waited until they were sure the cops wouldn't bother them, because the NYPD didn't screw around the way smaller town police did.<p>

Dean had to admit that they were a little too cavalier about it, but there had already been another dead baby, and the mother in this case had died. Things were getting urgent.

Sam hadn't been amused when Dean had reminded him of the consolation prize: hot lady cop.

"Who I'm sure we'll see again," Sam retorted, "at the next crime scene. Just before she hauls us in for impersonating FBI agents. Then we're really fucked."

"Yeah, but nothing's fucked yet, Sammy. And at least this time we got a live victim to talk to. What do you make of Emily's nightmares?"

Sam shook his head, tapping his fingers where his arm rested against the window. "I guess it seems kind of obvious, but I think we're looking at a mare."

"Mares don't usually kill their marks, though."

"No, but. Things have been kind of weird lately."

"Yeah, but not fucking-to-death weird. And that's another thing mares don't do. Fucking."

"Okay, so I'm wrong. I'll do some research when we get to the hotel. It'll be a lot easier now that one of these women has been alive to talk to."

Their hotel room was more of a closet with a couple of bunk beds and a bathroom that was the size of a closet-within-a-closet. This was exactly the kind of shit that kept him at least twenty miles outside of any place where the phone book weighed twenty pounds and had the words "greater metropolitan area" on the cover. Too many fucking people. The air made him itch.

At least the food was good. That could almost redeem the place if he wasn't sure the Impala's wheels were going to be gone by sunrise.

Dean called Bobby while Sam sat on the bottom bunk, staring at his computer screen and furrowing his brows. "Our buddy Mike Kayser might be getting a call soon."

"Oh good. From who?" Bobby asked. Dean could hear the scowl on his face.

"NYPD."

"I'll do what I can, but watch your ass. The NYPD don't screw around, boy."

"I've heard," Dean replied, glancing over at Sam, who was still gazing at his computer screen, his eyes glassy. "Any other dead babies out your way?"

"No. Whatever this is, it's moving east and it's staying there."

"What do you know about mares?" Dean asked.

"Well, when they're actual monsters and not just a kid having bad dreams, they're pretty nasty little shits. But I've never heard of one of 'em killing anyone. They feed on dreams. They like to stick to one person as long as possible, and killing their meal ticket would just be stupid."

"Maybe that's not what we're looking at, then. They don't kill their victims, they don't screw 'em. We're oh-for-two."

"Screw 'em?"

"Yeah. The girl we talked to today. She told us the thing that was harassing her started boning her soon after it first appeared."

"Huh," Bobby huffed. Dean could hear him pouring himself a drink and rustling through some papers. "You're not looking at a mare. Let me do some reading. I'll call you back sometime tomorrow."

"Thanks, Bobby. Talk to you then," Dean said, and hung up.

"So?" Sam said.

"He said it's not a mare. Didn't seem too sure of what it could be, though. Said he was going to do some reading. He'll call us tomorrow." Dean sat down on the windowsill, looking down at the street through the partially-opened blinds. "What about you? You got anything?"

"Nothing definite right now, but there is something."

"What is it?"

"Newspaper article from about two months ago. A pregnant woman threw herself down the stairs of her apartment building because she thought she had the devil's baby inside her."

"And?"

"And she talked about having nightmares just like Emily's. She thought there was a monster raping her for weeks while she slept."

"Alright. We should go talk to her. And hey, the cops aren't going to make that connection, so we'll have them off our asses."

"I hope so. I'll track her down and we'll go see her tomorrow."

* * *

><p>Olivia was almost grateful for the phone call that came early in the morning. A phone call at this time of day was work-related. Work meant that she didn't have to be in her apartment anymore, which was a relief. She felt like she was being watched here, so much that she couldn't sleep at all. So she was almost grateful for the distraction. Until she heard the news that Emily Saunders had died a few hours before.<p>

"How?" she asked, horrified.

"Heart failure," Dr. Aronson told her. "She crashed after falling asleep and we couldn't revive her."

Olivia hung up the phone, confused and upset. She wondered if she'd ever really had a chance at helping Emily, if she could have made a breakthrough with just a little more time and patience.

Without Emily, the case was dependent on Angela Pettis' friend. At least until there was another victim. Or two victims.

She needed to find the FBI agents from earlier in the day. Whatever information they had about Emily, her baby, and the baby's father was information that Olivia needed.

She showered, scrubbing herself pink under the hottest setting. As soon as she got to the precinct she would call the agents' supervisor to see if she could somehow convince him to drop the need-to-know bullshit and let her in on whatever details the agents could give her.

When she arrived at work, Munch presented her with some information about a woman named Marie Pearson.

"Is she another victim?" Olivia asked, looking down at the printouts he handed to her.

"Could be. This is a case from a few months ago. Hers is basically the same story as our two other victims. Nightmares, unexplained pregnancies. Marie was so disturbed by her nightmares she was convinced she was pregnant with a demon's baby."

"What happened to her?"

"She threw herself down the service stairs of her apartment building." Olivia's stomach turned, thinking of the fear and pain the woman must have been experiencing. "She survived, but she miscarried after."

"You think I should go talk to her?"

"I think there's too much overlap for it to be a coincidence. With Emily Saunders dead, we need any leads we can get."

He was right. "I know this sounds crazy, but what if this actually is a case of ritual abuse? Marie talking about demonic influences, the nightmares that she and Emily were having. They were clearly disturbed, it could be some kind of trauma, and that symbol in Angela's room -"

"I did some research on that symbol, actually," Munch said. "I don't know if it's ritual abuse, but there could be some kind of cult activity. The symbol comes from the Key of Solomon. It's a demonology text."

"So whoever did this could have been trying to get rid of a demon? By killing those babies?"

Munch shrugged. "Talk to Marie. Whatever else we've got isn't getting us anywhere."

* * *

><p>One of the first things Elliot said to her was to ask her if she was sure she wasn't getting sick. When she answered that she was not getting sick, he went on to say, "Your FBI pals weren't in the system. Not in South Dakota, not anywhere."<p>

"Did you report them?"

"Of course. Hell of a lot good it did, though. They'll just move on to the next alias."

"I wonder what they were doing. Why try to get into the middle of an investigation like this? It's not high profile, there's no drugs or money to skim off the top of."

"Maybe they're reporters trying to get information, or maybe they're trying to run a scam on victims," Elliot said. "I don't know. All I know is that if they're hovering over this case, we'll see 'em again."

"Maybe." From what she could tell from speaking to Emily yesterday, they had interviewed her rather than trying to get money out of her, and reporters, even the ones from gossip rags, generally stuck to legal ways of getting information.

As they neared Marie's building, Olivia saw two men walking down the street, in the opposite direction she and Elliot were traveling, on the other side of the street. They were far off, but the taller one's height gave him away. "El. That's them." She pointed to the two of them.

"Son of a bitch," Elliot said under his breath. "You think they got to her before we could?"

"Awfully convenient that they just happen to be on the same side of town as someone we're on our way to interview."

"Alright," Elliot said, parking the car. "Let 'em pass by us, we'll follow them, surprise them. They'll never see us coming."

The men continued moving down the street. They passed Elliot and Olivia's car, seemingly unaware of their presence. Good. Elliot kept an eye on them in the side view mirror. They were dressed in ordinary clothes today, t-shirts and jeans as opposed to suits like the ones they'd worn yesterday. When they had gotten a little more than a block away, Elliot said, "Alright. I'll tail 'em, you stay on this side of the street, get ready to call for backup. If they recognize you, they'll get spooked."

Olivia nodded and slipped on her sunglasses. It was a paper thin disguise, but it was better than nothing. "Ready?" she said.

"Go."

They got out of the car, and Elliot crossed the street at a run, closing the distance between himself and the men. When he was only a few paces behind them, he called out, "Excuse me. Agents Cantrell and Staley?"

The two men kept walking, and Elliot called out, "Police! Need to talk to you."

After a moment, they stopped and turned to face him. "Is there a problem, officer?" the taller man asked.

"Detective," Elliot corrected him genially, and added, "Nope, no problem." He glanced across the street. Olivia was closing in. He'd have to stall until she was closer. "Can I see some identification?"

"Sure." As they reached into their pockets and took out their wallets, the taller man said, "What's this about?" Who the hell did he expect to fool with his hair cut like that? Did anyone actually believe these humps were feds?

Elliot ignored the question and instead asked, "You two off duty today?"

The shorter man smiled and did his best to look confused. He looked older than the other one, "I'm not really sure what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't," Elliot said. "Need to know and all that, huh?" They showed their driver's licenses: Kansas-issued to James Dayton and Andrew Lamarr, definitely aliases. "Got any federal ID, agents?" he asked, and the men shook their heads, still making noise about how they had no idea what he meant, just as Olivia crossed the street toward them. The two looked over and saw her coming, and the older one said, "Shit. Run."

The two of them took off in opposite directions, the taller one crossing the street and the older one ducking into an alley nearby. There was a fence at the other end of the alley with barbed wire at the top, and Elliot was sure the man would stop and surrender, but he took off his leather jacket and threw it over the top, covering the wire and scaling the fence anyway, grabbing his jacket on the way down. He cried out in pain as he hit the ground, but stood up and ran off.

Elliot was dumbfounded, losing a few moments while he tried to comprehend what had just happened, then took off again, entering the building - a hotel - and heading through it to the service entrance, which opened into the part of the alley that was fenced off. He saw the man rounding a corner and stayed in pursuit; he looked like he had a slight limp from the fall that seemed to be slowing him down.

Elliot caught up to him less than a block away, trying to scale another fence into an old lot with an abandoned warehouse. He ran forward and jumped, gripping the man by the waist and pulling them both down onto the ground, the mark thrashing and trying to get out from under him.

"Elliot," Olivia's voice crackled out on the two-way. "I lost him." The bastard looked satisfied at that and Elliot couldn't stop himself from landing a punch to the man's gut, just to calm him down.

"Now I know," Elliot said, turning the hump roughly onto his stomach, "that you probably got so many aliases you don't even remember what your name is." He twisted the man's arms behind his back, enjoying the sharp gasp that resulted from it. "But whatever your name is," he continued, pulling out the cuffs, "you're under arrest for impersonating a federal agent and resisting arrest." He latched the cuffs especially tight around the man's wrists. He got on the two-way and said, "Liv, I collared him. Go talk to Marie. I'm gonna take this piece of shit down to the station."

He looked back down at the punk he'd just apprehended and then stood up, hauling the man up by the cuffs and pushing him ahead, acutely aware of the limp the man was walking with and the pained sounds he continued to make with every step they took. "This was fun," Elliot said. "Let me take you back to my place."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes: **You guys! I went on vacation and had no internets for days, which is why it took me so long to get this to you. In this chapter, ELLIOT uses EXCESSIVE FORCE! It's super effective! (I stole that joke from my homegirl find-nowhere, who also writes awesome SVU/SPN crossover fanfictions.)

* * *

><p>The interrogation room Detective Stabler led him to was airtight. He'd realized it was a stupid thing to hope for, that the NYPD might have forgotten some vulnerable window or something that he could exploit. This wasn't Buttfuck, Nebraska. He wasn't going anywhere. And another woman was probably going to die because of it. Clueless as Stabler was, Dean couldn't help the contempt he felt. Listening to the shit he said, the lines out of a cop show - <em>seriously, "Let me take you back to my place?"<em> Dean thought. _Good one, Caruso, all you're missing is the guitar hook from "Won't Get Fooled Again"_ - made him think of a bulldog on a chain.

Thinking of all the terrible puns and lame cracks Stabler probably made on the job made Dean grin a little. Which only made the bulldog angrier and earned him a shove into the chair that Dean could tell would be wobbly, probably a screw sticking up through the upholstery. Oh yeah. There it was.

"You're looking awfully satisfied with yourself," Stabler said, "for someone who's getting slammed with a felony."

"I try to dream big."

"Yeah, well, it's gonna get bigger once we figure out what else you've been up to. So start talking. Make it easier on yourself and your partner."

"Nice try, cowboy." Dean put on his douchiest smirk, looking straight into Stabler's eyes, and then turned his gaze to the two-way mirror in front of him.

"Did you kill those women?"

Women? There was only one who had died, Angela. Had Emily -

"Oh yeah. Emily Saunders died earlier today. Charges are stacking up; that's man one at least. What were you doing talking to her?"

Dean kept his eyes on his reflection in the two-way mirror, crunched out the opening riffs to "Sad But True" in his head to stay focused. The bulldog barked again, slamming his hand down on the table.

"You think you're doing yourself a favor by staying quiet, but you're just digging the hole deeper the longer you stay quiet."

Dean tried to ignore the fact that barring divine intervention, he'd be in prison within the next day and a half. Tried not to let it show on his face.

"You know, normally perps don't make it so easy," Stabler said casually, his arms crossed, standing just behind Dean. "I've got two guys checking around to hotels, looking for your aliases. Running your picture off the hospital security cameras through the system. We'll find your partner. We'll find out who you are. And I bet we're gonna find a trail of dead babies and pregnant women wherever you've been.

"See, guys like you got mommy issues." Dean watched him in the mirror, leaning down close now, his breath raising the hairs at the base of his neck. He couldn't stop the shiver that ran down his spine, his jaw clenching at the words "mommy" and "issues." "They take out their aggression on these women. Sometimes they beat 'em, sometimes they knock 'em up so they'll have to stick around. It's all because mommy didn't love you enough. Maybe she wasn't around, maybe she -"

By the time Dean realized he'd fallen for it, he had already shouted, "I was trying to help those women!" He relaxed his hands, unclenched them and laid them flat on the table in front of him.

"Help?" Stabler growled. He grabbed Dean by the collar of his shirt, slung him against the opposite wall, near the door, making his knee sing in pain. He staggered, struggling to stay standing. He braced himself as Stabler stalked over to him, pushing him into the cinderblock, his arm against the back of Dean's neck, hot and oppressive behind him. "Do the people you try to help always end up dead?" he said, wrenching Dean around by his shoulder and pressing his hand against Dean's throat.

It may have been the pain in his knee, or maybe Stabler's hand on his neck cutting off his air, but the words seemed to echo, building with the pounding in his head, wrapping around his brain as he struggled to keep breathing.

Someone pounded on the mirror, and Stabler narrowed his eyes, squeezing just a bit tighter for a few seconds more before letting him go. As Dean caught his breath, slouching against the wall, he suspected there always needed to be someone behind that mirror. Probably have a lot more dead suspects with this nutcase in here alone.

As Stabler left the room, Dean made his way back over to the chair they'd put him in and mulled over his chances of getting out of here. Well, chance. "Cas, I could really use some divine intervention right now."

* * *

><p>"What the hell did he just say?" Elliot asked, his arms crossed.<p>

"Something about divine intervention," Captain Cragen said, frowning. "I couldn't catch all of it." His tone was still short, having just talked Elliot down from assaulting the suspect, whatever the hell his name was. This seemed to be a weekly event. Cragen had even heard rumors around the precinct about betting pools, everyone watching with bated breath for the moment when Elliot would snap. And though they were just that - rumors - Cragen had to think about what kind of image Elliot's spectacular outbursts lent to the Special Victims Unit.

"Weren't Munch and Olivia wondering about cult activity?" Elliot asked.

"Yeah, but this guy doesn't fit the profile," Cragen replied, shaking his head. "He's just a punk with a problem with authority. Those don't make for good cult members, and if he were a cult leader, he'd have lawyered up as soon as you hauled him in."

"So what do you think?"

The captain sighed. "He seems like he has a soft spot for women. Wait till Olivia gets back, see if she can get anything out of him. After that, book him."

* * *

><p>Olivia had to swallow the humiliation of letting fake Agent Staley get away from her. Not that he had been a particularly easy target: his height had made it easy for him to scale a fire escape that she had no hope of reaching. He slipped out of her grasp like a fish in water.<p>

But if she had just been a bit faster, was the mantra she found herself repeating again and again. Maybe her exhaustion was turning her into a liability. If she had just been a bit faster. She could have made the collar, could have bettered their chances at figuring out just what the hell these two were doing and maybe get some kind of break in this case.

This made the walk up to Marie's apartment especially grueling. Fourth floor walkup, just coming off of a pursuit. She rang the bell to Marie's apartment and leaned against the wall, across from the door.

Marie's eyes were puffy and red when she answered the door. "Marie Pearson?" Olivia said.

"Yeah."

"I'm Detective Benson. Can I ask you a few questions?"

"About what?" she said, guarded.

"Well, a case I'm currently investigating has some similarities to something that happened to you a few years ago." Though Olivia tried be as gentle as she could, Marie's stance did not change. She stood with her hand still on the doorknob, her eyebrows raised and her expression unimpressed, seeming waiting for Olivia to finish. "Can I come in? Maybe it's better if we talk in private."

Before she had finished speaking, Marie interrupted her. "Look, is this about the baby? The dead babies?" she asked, her voice flat.

"Maybe it's better if we talk in private," Olivia repeated, a bit more firmly.

"Who says we're talking? What if I'm done talking? Am I a suspect?"

"No, not at all."

"Good. Then we're done." Marie moved to close the door, but Olivia reached out and held it open.

"You are the last lead I have in this investigation. If you don't talk to me, more women could die."

Marie's stare softened. "I know you're trying to do your job. But this isn't something you can help."

"Why would you think that?" Olivia asked. "Have you spoken to anyone else about this?"

"No."

Olivia sighed. "You're sure? No one else has come around asking you about this?"

"Okay, yes."

"Two men?"

"Yes."

"Who were they?"

"They gave me fake names."

"What names?"

"Layne and Jerry something. I don't know who would have fallen for that." Marie finally opened the door enough to let Olivia in. "Come in."

Marie's apartment was a one-room, sparsely furnished, old but clean. Marie pointed to the couch and said, "You can sit down. Do you want any water or tea or anything? You look tired."

"I'm fine. But thanks." Marie returned from the kitchenette with two glasses of water anyway, and sat next to Olivia. "Can you tell me about what happened with your baby?"

"It wasn't my baby," Marie replied, mumbling. "I started having nightmares. This is gonna sound crazy, but ... it was a demon. Raping me. In my dreams. It kept happening for weeks. I was so tired during the day that I couldn't go to work. I lost my job. It got so bad I thought about killing myself. Then one day it stopped." The way she told her story sounded so rote, and Olivia knew she'd been asked to relive it over and over again two years ago.

"And after that you were pregnant?"

"I knew you wouldn't believe it."

"Are you sure that you weren't raped by a human, Marie?" She described the drugs rapists sometimes used to incapacitate their victims, but Marie shook her head.

"That's not what happened," she said. "I'm still a virgin. When I was in the psych ward they ordered a medical exam. That was one thing they didn't have an explanation for."

Olivia sipped the water Marie had given her, and after a moment asked, "And is this what you told the men who came to talk to you earlier?"

"Yeah."

"Was that all they wanted to talk about?"

Marie nodded. "They believed me though."

"Did they identify themselves other than the fake names they gave you? Were they working for some kind of organization, like a church?"

"No. They work alone. They said the same thing you did. That more women were going through the same thing I did, and they're dying."

It was becoming harder and harder to believe that the two men were trying to run a scam on someone. People didn't often impersonate officers or federal agents just to help people, but vigilantism did exist. But there was vigilantism, and then there was whatever these men were doing. "What did you mean when you said this isn't something I can help?"

Marie set her glass down on the coffee table in front of the couch, traced her finger around the rim. "I'm not saying don't try to help, but."

"But?" Olivia prompted her.

"When this was happening to me, I didn't need the hospital or the cops. I needed an exorcism."

Now that she had spoken to Marie, she had to come to terms with the fact that their investigation really had hit a wall. At least until the next victim or victims they found, and even then it was unlikely they would come into some kind of windfall.

But she had one last question for Marie, one which she was almost afraid to ask. "How did your nightmares start?"

Marie regarded her in silence. "You look really tired. Are you sure you're okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine," Olivia insisted. "Could you tell me about the nightmares?"

It took Marie a moment to speak again. "I wasn't able to tell that I was dreaming. I would hear a sound, a big boom, and then this smoke would appear. And hold me down and attack me. They got worse and it started to look more like a human."

Olivia shook the thought of her own nightmares from her mind. She thanked Marie for talking to her. As she walked toward the stairwell, Marie called out to her. "Wait!"

Olivia turned to see Marie coming toward her. She pressed a card into Olivia's hand. "This is the number the guys from earlier gave me. They're … I don't know why you're looking for them, but they're just trying to help. They're good guys. They know what they're doing. Maybe you should give them a call."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes: **Nothing too upsetting in this chapter. Unless people standing around talking upsets you, or Dean's BF Cas continuing to let everyone down makes you sad. Both of these things bother me, so I have decided that Casey hangs around for a while after her season 12 return, because I like her. Yay!

* * *

><p>"Um ... Castiel?" Sam said, his eyes closed. This was awkward. Cas didn't like him all that much, for one. For another, every time they needed his help they were reminded that Cas was fighting a war. Fighting a war. Grand terms like that. "Dean is in some trouble. And I can't help him. So we need you."<p>

Nothing. No sound of wind rustling fabric or bird's wings flapping, so Sam opened his eyes and looked around. Nothing. He closed his eyes again. Maybe he was doing something wrong. "Castiel? Please. Dean's in jail and there's no way I can break him out. You're the only chance we've got."

Still nothing. Shit. He sat down on the bottom bunk of their hotel room. He had called Bobby the second he'd arrived at their hotel, and Bobby had groused and complained and questioned his and Dean's mental capacities, but then admitted that they'd done what they could. "Sorry, kid, I got nothing. Have you tried calling Cas?"

And so here he was. He briefly entertained the notion of turning himself in - they'd broken out of prison before, after all - but it probably wouldn't be all that difficult for the police to connect the dots and keep him and Dean separate. Breaking out together was one thing. Doing it separately was something else.

His phone rang. It was a 212 area code, but he didn't recognize the number. Was it Marie? They'd given her his number earlier that day when they spoke to her.

"Hello?" he answered.

"Is this Layne?"

"Who is this?"

"It's ... Detective Olivia Benson." She sounded different than she had before, tense and nervous. Less like a cop.

He hung up anyway, swearing. She called back immediately.

"If I wanted to arrest you, I'd have our tech unit tracking your phone. I just want to talk to you."

"About what? How did you get this number?"

"Marie Pearson. She told me everything," Detective Benson replied.

"Everything."

"Even the stuff about ... her baby. She told me that you and your partner are just trying to help."

"Uh-huh."

"I think I need your help."

"You mean you need me to turn myself in," Sam scoffed.

"No! No. Marie told me about the nightmares she was having. And how they started. And they sound a lot like nightmares that ... that I'm having."

"Okay. Tell me about them."

"I'm at a payphone. Can we meet somewhere to talk?"

"Yeah, this doesn't sound like a set-up at all."

"It's not."

"Look. If you're having these nightmares too, you're in danger. You saw Angela and Emily. But how do I know you're not lying about this?"

"You don't," she admitted. "I'm calling you from a payphone because I didn't want this call to show up on my phone log. I'm trying to protect you. If you don't help me ... I don't want to end up like Emily and Angela and Marie."

He sighed. "Alright. Where's this payphone? I'll meet you there."

* * *

><p>They called in Novak. It had only been a few hours since Elliot had brought in their perp but all they could get him on was resisting arrest and impersonating a federal agent. Which was nothing to scoff at, to be fair, but there was no connection they could find between him and the deaths. Since they didn't know who he was, there was no apartment or workplace to search, therefore no warrant she could get for them.<p>

"So what do you need me for, exactly?" she asked.

There was a collective shrug. She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, and looked at Elliot. "You couldn't get anything out of him?"

"Nothing."

Casey sighed, looking into the interrogation room. The man seemed perturbed. He sat in the chair they'd given him, probably the wobbly one, his eyes closed. His lips were moving. "And what did he say after you left the room?"

"We couldn't hear it all, but we definitely heard the words 'divine intervention,'" Elliot replied.

"Maybe there is some kind of cult activity," Casey said. "We should call Huang in for a psych eval."

"Better than nothing," Elliot said. "You put in the order, I'll give him a call after Olivia talks to him."

"Where is she, anyway?" Cragen asked, checking his watch. "Awful long time to be questioning Marie Pearson."

Elliot nodded. "I'll see if I can get her on the phone."

* * *

><p>As she waited for the man who was probably not named Layne, Elliot called. "Shit," she hissed, and quickly tried to think of an excuse for why she was taking so long.<p>

"Hey, Liv," he said. "Is everything okay?"

"Yep," she replied, trying to sound casual.

"Oh, good." He paused, and Olivia knew he was waiting for some explanation. "You sure? We were just wondering where you were, could use your help questioning our buddy in the interrogation room."

"Yeah, Marie suggested someone I could go talk to, someone else who was having the same kind of problem she did."

"Anything new?"

"Not really. Dead end," she said.

"Okay. We were gonna get Huang in here after you talk to our perp, so." _Hurry up, _was the implication.

"Yep, sure." She nodded, suddenly aware of how uncomfortable and awkward she sounded. "See you back at the house." She hung up, not waiting for his response.

She sucked in a breath through her teeth. _Well, that went well_, she thought, kicking herself. She'd sounded about as convincing as a kid who'd been caught up past her bedtime. She'd have to play it off later, talk about how crappy she felt later.

But that was something to worry about later. Right now she saw her slippery perp from earlier. "Here's the payphone," she said when he got nearer to her. "Give it a call."

He took out his cell phone, hit a few keys and held the phone up to his ear. The payphone began ringing seconds later.

"That doesn't really prove anything. There could be an entire squad waiting to jump me."

"I know. Thanks for meeting me."

"So you've been having nightmares like Marie's?"

"Yes. I have to be quick. Let's go into this coffee shop." She led him into a coffee shop a few stores down from the payphone and ordered two coffees for them, paying with cash. They sat at a table next to the window and Olivia said, "Look, can you tell me your name? Your real one. Just a first name, something that sounds more believable than Layne."

He tore open some sugar packets and said, "Sam."

"Sam. Okay. I'm Olivia."

"Tell me about your nightmares."

She told him. She described the loud sounds, the smoke, the form attacking her that had started off vague and nebulous and that had quickly become more corporeal. "And I'm so tired during the day now. I don't know what to do."

"That sounds exactly like what those other women were dealing with."

"When I talked to Marie, she said. She said she needed an exorcism." Sam nodded. "What did she mean?"

Sam looked puzzled. "Well, you know what an exorcism is, right"

"Well yeah, but do you think she's right?"

He seemed hesitant to answer, but then nodded.

"So we're talking about demons here?" Olivia said, laughter in her voice.

"We don't know yet. But it looks that way," Sam replied, completely serious.

"Oh my god," Olivia said after a moment. "Okay. I can't. This is crazy. This is why Marie told me to call you?"

"I know it's hard to believe."

"Are you two part of some kind of cult or religious group or something that would explain why you're feeding me this bullshit?"

"No!" Sam said, clearly frustrated. "This is what we do. We find monsters that hurt and kill people and we get rid of them. And this is some kind of monster, I'm telling you."

Olivia shook her head. "You're delusional. And I'm losing my fucking mind talking to you, I should be taking you in," she said, mostly to herself. Sam scooted his chair back from the table, watching her carefully. Hell, he'd gotten away from her once, he'd probably do it again. "I have to go back to the precinct. I have to question your partner."

He was almost grimacing as he told her, "Stay in touch, alright? I know you don't believe what's happening but it's the truth. Your nightmares are going to get worse, and more vivid, and after a few weeks you'll be pregnant. Maybe I can help you stop it."

Olivia stood up. "Am I going to hear the same thing from your partner?"

"Maybe. If he talks to you at all."

"Then maybe he'll have a chance at an insanity defense."


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes:** Some explicit description of an attempted assault in this chapter.

* * *

><p>Olivia stalked through the halls of the precinct. She passed Munch and Fin reviewing something on a monitor, Munch's face calm and impassive and Fin scowling at whatever it was they were looking at. Elliot had clearly been getting impatient waiting for her, but it was hard to care about that now.<p>

"He's in INT-1?" Olivia asked, not even slowing down on her way through the office.

"No. Liv -"

"Okay, so where is he? I need to talk to this hump _now_."

"That's the thing. He's gone."

Gone? "What are you talking about?"

"He's gone. We don't know how he got out, but he did."

"How the hell could he gotten out, he was under lock and key!" Olivia exclaimed. She needed answers from that bastard. How was she going to get them now?

"Look, calm down. Munch and Fin are reviewing the tape from the interrogation room he was in, we're gonna trace any calls that come into his cell phone. We'll find him and his partner."

She walked over to where Munch and Fin were standing, still staring at the tape as they had been moments ago. "How's it going?"

Fin shook his head and tracked the tape back for her. "Watch this shit. Craziest fucking thing I ever seen."

She watched Sam's partner sitting at the table. He looked exhausted, in pain and generally miserable, scrubbing his hands down over his face and leaning forward on his arms. Then he stood up, the chair scraping against the floor as he did, and paced back and forth near the window. He abruptly stopped pacing after a few moments, then turned, jerking his head around to face the door as if he'd heard something behind him.

Then he disappeared.

"What the hell? Track back a little," she said.

"That's what we said when we first saw it," Munch replied. As he rewound the tape back to the point where she'd first started watching, he added, "It'll be the same, no matter how many times you watch it again."

"Could someone have doctored the tape?" Olivia asked as the man stood up from the chair again.

The man disappeared again and Munch said, "We noticed he was gone almost immediately. There wouldn't have been nearly enough time to even get to the data, much less to doctor it."

"What the hell could have happened?" Olivia muttered, and Munch and Fin shrugged. She turned to see Elliot just behind her, watching the footage with the same disbelief on his face. She walked back to her desk, wondering if this insanity could actually be true. A demon. Attacking women, attacking her. Maybe abducting Sam's partner. She shook her head, ridding herself of the thought.

* * *

><p>It took a few moments for Dean's brain to catch up with the rest of him, which was lying, half-curled up, on the floor of his and Sam's hotel room. He felt as if he had been blown apart and then roughly jammed back together, which could have been what happened for all he knew. He gingerly rolled onto his stomach, raising his head to look around the room, expecting to see Cas, at least. But he was alone.<p>

"Great. Thanks, Cas. Stick around next time, won't ya?" He pushed himself onto his back, groaning with the pain of his knee and his back - really, his whole fucking body, Christ he hated it when Cas beamed him up like this - to look up at the ceiling, which offered no answers or compassion. He never thought a twin-size bunk bed - so worn that a spring was beginning to press out, digging into his hip - could be so welcoming.

He wondered where Sam was. He thought about calling him to check in but hopefully his brother would have had enough sense to trash the phone he'd been using.

And where the hell had Cas gone? This wasn't the first time he'd whisked Dean away somewhere with no explanation but it just pissed Dean off more every time it happened. He hadn't seen or spoken to Cas in weeks and he was _worried_, god dammit, one more thing to add to the pile.

He breathed a rough sigh and fell asleep rather quickly, startled awake by a weight pressing on his chest. He opened his eyes and found himself looking into a pair of clear blue eyes that were gazing down patiently at him.

"Shit," he snarled through his teeth, starting to reach under his pillow for his gun, but oh shit it wasn't there. The woman above him pursed her lips. "Ssssh," she whispered, shaking her head and reaching out to grasp his hand.

"Oh, no fucking way, bitch," Dean said, trying to shake her off of him and finding that his arms were growing heavy. He felt drunk, his head swimming and his body weak. Her hand rested on his cheek as she leaned forward and kissed him. A stream of curses buzzed through his head as he struggled to shove her off of him, but he couldn't even turn his head to the side to avoid her kiss. Shit. _Shit_.

Broad daylight. The door to their room was still closed and dead bolted shut. How was this happening?

Her fingers traced a bright, burning trail down the side of his face, scraping against the stubble on his chin, down past his neck. Her fingernails, a deep crimson that shone wetly even in the dull light, played with the buttons on his shirt, seeming to snip the threads. She opened his shirt, sliced through the tee shirt underneath and he knew that this was where this was going when he saw her above him. He closed his eyes again, tried to ignore his arousal as her nails scratched down his torso, like the edge of a knife skirting across his skin.

"Look at me," she whispered, and his eyes opened.

Her dark hair hung in front of her face, her eyes still bright in the shadow. His fists clenched at the sound of her voice, low and raspy, inhuman. He could move again, though she didn't seem to notice, still focusing on getting him undressed. He couldn't break her gaze but counted down from three in his head and brought his elbow up, slamming into her nose and knocking her head against the slats of the bed above them. A keening sound erupted from her lips, a screech that seemed to fill the room, that Dean could almost feel in the air around him, digging into him like claws.

He grit his teeth and shoved her off of the bed and onto the floor. He fell over with her, on top of her, blood from her nose spattering down onto the carpet. Still keening, she tried to get above him again, her eyes suddenly black. He pressed all of his weight down onto her chest, holding her arms immobile while he reached for the jug of holy water sitting on the windowsill. He flipped the lid off, overturning the jug. Her screeching became even louder and she pushed against him, sending him flying back against the bed, stars erupting across his vision as the back of his skull hit the wooden frame.

And here she was again, her eyes close to his, still black, her nails cutting into the skin at his neck. He was paralyzed again, slumped against the bed, his arms limp by his sides. The pressure at his neck increased and then.

He sucked in a breath, air filling his lungs rapidly, painfully. He was alive. Awake.

He sat up, looking around him. Nothing had been disturbed. There was no blood on the carpet. The holy water was still on the windowsill. Like nothing had happened. But his body ached, the pain in his knee flaring up. Sharp stinging lines burning on his chest. He stood up, limped over to the tiny bathroom. His shirt was still buttoned up, the tee shirt underneath intact. The only evidence that anything at all happened the angry red marks scratched into the skin underneath, staring back at him from the mirror.

He heard a key in the lock on the door and tensed up. The door opened, and Sam came into the room. He jumped when he saw his brother in the bathroom, and then said, "Dean! How did you -" He paused, and said, "Are you alright? You look like hell. What happened?"

"Demon bitches," Dean muttered and moved back over to the bed, flinging himself onto the bottom bunk.

"A demon?"

"No. I don't know, something ... I fell asleep. Nightmare."

"Were you ... attacked?" Sam asked after a moment, the concern apparent in his eyes.

Dean sighed. "Please tell me there's beer," he replied.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes: **My erstwhile homegirl find-nowhere has delivered an ultimatum regarding the frequency with which I update.

* * *

><p>If Olivia was going to hang out with fugitives, she'd have to do it right. No use getting caught. She bought a prepaid phone at a convenience store and called Sam from her apartment. "Your partner's disappeared," she told him after he'd answered. "Just vanished into thin air in the interrogation room. Did you have anything to do with this?"<p>

"You think I could just make a person disappear from a heavily-guarded and reinforced police interrogation room?" Sam huffed.

"I think you're a criminal. I don't know what you're capable of. But I think you know more than you're letting on."

"I've told you everything I know, Olivia," he replied wearily. "Well." He paused. "Not everything. Something weird happened to my partner."

"You mean besides his miraculous escape?"

"He didn't escape."

"Then what happened?"

She heard him sigh, but he offered no explanation for the disappearance. "He was attacked, too. We think by the same thing that's attacking you and the other women."

"He was raped?" Olivia asked. Immediately her suspicion and anger toward the man shifted to concern.

"No. He fought her off."

"Her."

"Yes."

"A woman is doing this?"

"It's not a woman. It's a -"

"Yeah, okay, a demon," Olivia snapped, fuming. Another assault had occurred. Her instinct was to get a statement from the victim, but she doubted the man would want to talk much about it, based on his previous experience with SVU detectives.

They were silent for a few moments. Olivia looked around her apartment, wondering if she was imagining the smell of struck matches. Everything was quiet, nothing moving, no smoke or fog.

If Sam's partner had been attacked but could fight his attacker off, then maybe she could too. "Where is your partner?"

"His name's Dean. He's with me."

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine. He's pissed off, but he's fine."

"Fine," she heard Dean snark, and then the sound of a glass bottle being thrown into a trash can rang out. "Are we out of beer?"

"How did he stop the woman who attacked him?" Olivia asked.

Sam ignored Dean and said, "It was in a dream, but. He fought back. And used holy water. That would only have slowed her down, though, it wouldn't have stopped her. He woke up after he used the holy water."

"So he didn't stop her. She just left." She was disappointed that Dean had not found a more permanent way to stop her.

After a moment, Sam said, "Olivia. Where do you live?"

She scoffed, "I don't think it's a good idea to -"

"You are the next target. You know that. We need to set up some protection for you."

"What kind of protection?" she asked, suspicious.

"Wards. Charms."

"You're kidding."

"No." They were at a stalemate, neither one saying anything, waiting for the other to give in. "Olivia," Sam finally said, gentle and pleading. "You have to trust us. We can help you. We don't want anyone else to get hurt."

"This is just all so hard to believe," she said quietly.

"I know."

The light of day was starting to fade. It was getting dark inside her apartment, and it made her nervous. She got up from the couch to turn on a lamp, but the bulb emitted a loud pop, the filament fizzling out immediately, when she turned the switch.

"Okay," she said, spooked, trying to keep her voice calm. She gave Sam her address and he told her, "I'll be over soon."

* * *

><p>"We're going to the lady cop's apartment?" Dean said, disbelief in his voice.<p>

"I met up with her the other day," Sam replied, knowing that Dean was thinking of words like setup and trap, and added, "It was my suggestion to meet her."

Dean looked unconvinced, but helped Sam pack a bag from the trunk of the Impala, filling it with rock salt, herbs, a cup, a knife, a couple of books, some flannel bags, and an altar cloth. "She sound like she was starting to get it?"

"I wouldn't say 'get it,' but at least she's letting us help her."

"You got a plan?"

"Kinda. I figure we can ward it off until we figure out exactly what it is, and then do what we need to from there."

"Such as?"

Sam shrugged. "Maybe ... summon it and gank it."

"Simple," Dean replied, nodding. "I like it."

Sam rolled his eyes and slung the backpack over his shoulder. "Are you coming?"

"Of course," he said, checking the Impala for any scratches or dents for the second time.

"I think we should take a cab," Sam said.

"Christ," Dean groaned, putting his keys back in his pocket. "Fine. You handle this shit. Fuck, I need another beer."

* * *

><p>Olivia tried to focus on what was on her television, but found that every time someone came up the stairs of her apartment, or opened and closed a door, she jumped, her hand clutching her weapon.<p>

She had changed the bulb in the lamp, but the new bulb had burnt out immediately. After that she fled to the couch. The TV produced enough light, she told herself. Despite that, she leapt off the couch when she heard the buzzer, remembering after a moment that Sam and Dean were coming over. She forced herself to take a few deep breaths to calm herself down, and buzzed them in.

Dean looked much the same as he had when she had seen him on the security tape just before he'd disappeared: exhausted and in pain. She stepped aside to let them in. They set to work, clearing off her coffee table and laying out a cloth and a large silver cup. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.

"Not right now," Sam said.

"But we'll need you in a minute," Dean added, pouring a long line of salt on a windowsill. The tone of his voice was ominous. Olivia wanted to say something, but she didn't. Instead she watched them, curious about the things they were doing and wondering how all of this was supposed to keep an intruder out of her apartment. She stopped herself from asking questions. They were silent while they combined herbs and arranged a few small white candles around the cup.

When they were finished, Dean showed her the small cloth bags they'd made and said, "Alright. You need to hide these. Somewhere no one's gonna find them or fuck with them."

"I'm not sure where I could ..." Olivia replied, looking around.

"One needs to go near your bed and the other needs to go by the front door."

"There's a ledge above the door," she said, pointing.

"That'll work," Dean said, going over to the door and reaching up to place the bag on the doorjamb, at the top. There was enough room for the bag to rest on the wood of the doorjamb, and it couldn't be seen.

"What are those things?" Olivia asked, standing next to him.

"Mojo bags. Certain things demons don't like."

"Like what?"

He took a moment to answer, "Herbs. Weird stuff. Where's your bedroom?" He sounded like he was glossing over the specifics of the 'weird stuff,' but Olivia didn't press it as she led them to her room.

"See any good hiding places for the other one?" she asked.

Sam pointed to the nightstand next to her bedroom window, and walked over to it. "Behind nightstands works great," he said, kneeling down and feeling the back of the nightstand. He found something to attach the bag too, and stood up.

"Now no matter what you do," Dean said, "don't disturb the salt lines or move those mojo bags, okay?"

"Okay," Olivia nodded.

"Good. Now we need some of your blood."

"What the fuck?" Olivia said. "Jesus, I knew you two were insane."

"We need to paint demon wards on the windows," Sam said, as if everything that was happening around her was completely reasonable.

"And why can't you use your own blood?" Olivia demanded.

"You live here. It's your home. It has to be your blood."

She was on the verge of telling them to get out. Some salt, a few herbs and whatever weird stuff Dean didn't want to tell her about was supposed to stop her nightmares from happening and supposed to stop her from becoming the next dead mother? This all sounded like some horrible TV show. "Blood on the windows is gonna keep demons out?" she said.

"_Yes_," Sam replied, emphatic.

"There's no other way?" she asked, looking from Sam to Dean.

"No." Dean shook his head.

She glared at the two of them for a few moments. It seemed to spook both of them, but they stayed firm.

"We're not gonna force you to do this. But it's the only way," Dean said.

She rolled up her sleeve. "Fine."

"Here, come into the living room. We need to collect it in the cup," Sam said, leading her to the coffee table. He took a large, shining silver knife out of the backpack they'd brought with them.

"You guys get on the subway with that?" she asked as she sat down on the couch, leaning over the coffee table.

"No. We took a cab," Sam said.

As he moved toward her with the knife, she said, "That thing's clean, right?"

"Yes." And with that, Sam cut a clean line across her forearm. She supposed he did it as gently as it was possible to do so.

As Sam held her arm over the cup, Dean measured out some other herbs. "Is that more weird stuff?" she asked him.

Dean huffed a laugh and said, "Yeah."

After a moment she asked, "What do demons look like?"

Both of the men looked at her. "Like people, mostly. Sometimes smoke," Dean answered, looking back down at the herbs in front of him.

"Are there a lot of them?"

"Used to be an entire army of them. Yeah. There's a lot."

"Do any of them wear trenchcoats?"

Dean's head snapped back up to look at her again. Sam frowned, and he and Dean looked at each other. "Why do you ask?" Sam asked, still holding her arm above the cup.

"Angela Pettis' friend. The person she saw at the scene was wearing a trenchcoat."

"Did you get a description?" Dean said, his voice becoming more urgent.

"We had her talk to a sketch artist. There's a copy in my bag on the counter." Dean handed it to her and she pulled the portrait from the bag and showed it to him.

"Shit," Dean hissed, gritting his teeth.

"Someone you know?" Olivia asked.

"Yeah," he replied, angry. "I gotta go. Sam, you got this?"

"Yeah. Go."

Dean slammed the door behind him. Olivia could hear him swearing all the way down the hall.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes:** Some description of violence. I wonder how many times I use the word 'kill' in relation to the word 'babies' in this story.

* * *

><p>In their hotel room, Dean looked up. He looked up at the stains on the ceiling and said, "Cas, I don't know if you've heard, but you're wanted by New York's finest. We gotta talk. Where are you?" <em>So help me, if you pull your radio silence bullshit on me now, Cas,<em> he thought.

"New York's finest what?" Cas asked, behind him. He looked perturbed as he tried to find a few inches of unoccupied space to stand in.

"The cops, Cas. A woman said she saw you kill one of those babies." Dean's fists clenched as he said it, and he desperately wanted to believe that Cas had not done this, that maybe it was some other feathery punk in a trenchcoat who could disappear at will. "And the police sketch is a dead ringer for you, man, so please tell me there's an explanation for this."

"You think I did this," Cas said. The look in his eyes, glazed over and dull, was becoming all too familiar. It was an expression that was beyond exhausted. Hunted, barely functioning above the basest survival instincts. Dean had to look away, felt his muscles relaxing, guilt replacing anger.

"Look. I just need some answers. That woman saw someone, who apparently looked a hell of a lot like you. Maybe it was, I don't know, a demon. Or one of Raphael's buttboys or -"

"It was me."

Dean turned around, covering his eyes with his hand. "God dammit, Cas," he whispered, and sat down on the bottom bunk.

"I didn't kill the infant."

"So what the hell happened?"

"I," Cas began, and paused. He sighed, frowning. "I considered it. It was dangerous. But I got there and I ... I couldn't do it." He cast his eyes down, his head shaking slightly.

"Why was this one even on your radar? Don't you usually leave the monsters to us?"

"A demon impregnated that woman. She'd been ... praying. For months. For it to go away. I finally realized what the creature was and came to get rid of it."

"Why didn't you call us?"

"Because you wouldn't have done what needed to be done," he snapped. After a moment, he added, "But it didn't matter. I couldn't do it either."

"So who did it?"

"Angela Pettis," Cas replied. "I arrived, I went to her bedside. Painted the devil's trap on the floor and then. I faltered. She took the weapon from my hand and did it herself."

Dean stood up, pacing. "What demon?"

"His name is Asmodai. He was a prince of hell before Sam trapped Lucifer. I'd heard he didn't survive the war but this is certainly his area of expertise."

"What's he doing?"

"He's reproducing. There are women like Emily Saunders and Angela Pettis all over the world. Asmodai is an incubus."

"An incubus. These babies are Cambions? Like Jesse Turner? Shit," Dean said. Did they have another Antichrist on their hands, out of nowhere, just like that? He pulled out his phone to call Sam, thinking Apocalyptic thoughts again, but Cas interrupted him.

"Jesse Turner was a special case. Lucifer's presence gave him his powers. These children wouldn't be nearly as powerful even if they did survive. Which they're not."

His anger resurfaced, hot and ugly. "Which, what, you didn't find out until after you decided you had to go full-tilt baby killer?" He didn't bother to contain the venom in his voice, and regretted that decision immediately when Cas sighed and turned his back to Dean, moving to look out the window.

"I admit that it wasn't the most humane course of action. Certain aspects of this war with Raphael have made me forget the reasons why it started in the first place. Why we worked so hard to avert the Apocalypse."

The way his shoulders slumped forward made him look defeated already, and the anger roiling in Dean's gut dissipated. He stepped over to the windowsill, next to Cas and said, "Look, Cas, just. Sit down and have a beer, alright?" Raphael wasn't going to win the war in the next five minutes, and Asmodai wasn't going to attack Olivia before she fell asleep. Five fucking minutes was all they needed.

Cas glanced at Dean, his gaze not lasting long, a quick flash of blue amongst the matte beige of the hotel room. "I can't. I'm afraid that if I stop moving now, I'll." He paused, and looked down at his hands.

"Cas?" Dean prompted, but everything Cas was going to say was apparent in the way he ignored the sound of his name, the way his face hardened and the tone of his voice hid any traces of vulnerability that might have been present before.

"I'll come back soon," Cas said, straightening. "I'll see what I can find out about Asmodai." He hesitated, and a moment and a familiar rustling sound later, he was gone.

"Shit," Dean said, and left the room, locking up with much more force than was necessary. He called Sam as he left the hotel. "Give me the lady cop's address," he barked into his phone after Sam answered, weaving and dodging his way down the sidewalk."I'm on the way back."

"What the fuck, Dean," Sam answered, irritated. "I've been calling you for the past hour. Did you get in touch with, uh -"

"Yeah," Dean interrupted. The less Olivia knew about Cas, the better, probably. Although, hell, at some point she was going to start asking questions like if there were demons, where were the angels. The same ones he'd asked at one point in his life.

"And?"

"It's an incubus."

"What? I thought we ruled incubi out."

"Yeah, well. They're back in, apparently."

"Shit," Sam said, and Dean could hear Olivia asking, "What?" in the background.

"You gonna tell her?"

"Yeah, I guess. We'll figure out what to do when you get here." Sam gave Dean Olivia's address and they hung up, leaving Dean to navigate public transportation on his own.


	11. Chapter 11

"So Cas is sure we're not going to have an army of Cambions in a few years?"

"Seemed like it," Dean said, and Olivia asked, "What's a Cambion?" The hushed tones they were using were obviously meant to avoid upsetting her, which she found mildly insulting – obviously the fact that she had let them bleed her in her own living room hadn't demonstrated that she was not exactly a delicate flower – and a bit unsettling, all things considered.

"It's, uh, the child of a human and an incubus," Sam replied.

"An incubus," Olivia said.

"Yeah." Sam offered no more explanation and started packing up the books, herbs, and other things they'd brought with them into backpacks.

"So you're leaving?" she asked after a moment.

"I'm going to go do some research," Sam said, "and we have to add some protections to our hotel room." He paused, and looked up at her. "You'll be safe," he said, and the way his voice softened as he said it almost made Olivia believe him.

She ignored the creeping exhaustion and resolved not to fall asleep. Her bones felt heavy, and her muscles protested every movement she made. Turning on the television was an ordeal. There was a cold cup of coffee on the end table that she finished off, hoping the espresso shots would keep her going through the rest of the night. She dreaded the next day, not knowing how much longer she could stay on her feet, running only on adrenaline and coffee.

* * *

><p>"There a reason we didn't tell her what's really happening here?" Dean asked as Sam hailed a cab.<p>

"You think it was a good idea to tell her we think a prince of hell is doing this to her? And to you? Besides, we don't know much about this ourselves. Even Cas isn't totally sure it's Asmodai we're dealing with."

Dean scowled, dissatisfied. "There was something else Cas said," he said after a moment. "He said there's more women all over the world. There's got to be more in this city. We need to find them before they die too."

Sam looked over at him for a long moment and said, "Or before Cas gets to them?"

Dean hadn't mentioned how close Cas had been to going totally off the fucking rails and killing a baby, but he wasn't surprised that Sam brought it up. "Yeah. He said he just couldn't do the last one once he got there, and I believe him, but ..."

"He might change his mind next time."

Dean couldn't sum up the energy to give Sam a yes or a no, wanted to avoid answering because he just didn't want to acknowledge the question. A cab pulled up to the sidewalk, and Sam climbed in first, sliding across the backseat. Dean followed, shutting the door roughly behind him. He missed his baby. He missed being in control.

* * *

><p>Sam knew the pain and exhaustion of the past few days was catching up to Dean, so when they got to their room he opened the cooler they had stashed under the bottom bunk bed and handed a beer to Dean and took one for himself.<p>

The book that contained all the symbols they used on a regular basis wasn't strictly necessary since he had memorized the symbols and sigils in it a long time ago. Sam opened it anyway and set it on the table next to the window, opening the drapes and the blinds. He looked over at Dean. "You ready to be bled?" he asked after he had laid out the bowl, some bandages and antiseptic.

"Not really," Dean replied, grimacing. "Wish we had something stronger," he added, lifting his beer.

"I know, shit sucks," Sam replied, taking the recently-cleaned knife he had used on Olivia out of the bag. "How's your knee?"

"I'll keep chewing Tylenol," Dean replied. He rolled his sleeve up and held him arm out, palm up. Sam reached out, took Dean's wrist in one hand and held the knife just above Dean's skin.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Go for it."

Sam sliced a clean line across Dean's arm, taking care not to cut through old scar tissue. He could see a few faint pinkish lines crisscrossing each other, remnants of old fights and other times they'd needed blood. The knife was so sharp it was effortless – _for me, anyway_, he noted dryly as Dean clenched his fist and hissed through his teeth – parting the skin as if that was how it always was. Dean stood, angling his arm so that the blood flowed down into the bowl Sam held, gritting his teeth and taking a pull off his beer every now and then. He picked up some bandages when Sam nodded that he had enough and retreated into the bathroom to clean up his arm and the knife.

It didn't take long to paint the symbols, since there wasn't much area to cover in such a small room. Dean came out of the bathroom and raised his eyebrows when he saw that Sam was already packing up. Sam moved past him to clean the bowl out and was not surprised to see Dean lying on the bottom bunk, his eyes eyelids heavy, angling his head up to finish off the last of his beer. He didn't reach for another, simply tossed the empty bottle in the trash can across the room and lay back.

"I'm gonna do some research," Sam said. "See what I can find out about Asmodai."

Dean nodded.

"Want another beer?"

Dean shook his head slightly, already on his way out. Moments later, Sam heard him snoring softly. He closed the blinds and turned his attention to his computer.

A little over an hour passed, the only sounds Dean's snores, the whine of the hotel's ventilation system and the noise from the street outside.

When he heard Dean's breathing pick up, Sam looked up from his computer, and when Dean groaned, deep and low in the back of his throat, Sam called, "Dean?"

His groans became louder, more pained and desperate, his breathing heavy and shuddering. He bounded over to Dean's bed, shook him and called his name again. "Come on, man, wake up!" As he gripped Dean's shoulders, he felt that the muscles were tight. Dean's entire body was rigid, one hand clenched into a fist across his chest and the other by his side.

Dean couldn't move. Asmodai was attacking him again. Sam slapped his brother's face, shook him again. "Dean, wake up! Dean!"


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes: **Holy shit, I am just the worst. Sorry for keeping you all waiting. Life gets in the way of fanfiction sometimes, y'all. Then again, so does World of Warcraft and crocheting. **Trigger warning: **There are not one but two rape scenes in this chapter.

* * *

><p>There were no warning signs this time. The fog that usually filled the room, the loud booming sounds outside her door, the quick sinking feeling of dread that filled her – none of them. She was watching TV, and then she was sprawled on her bed, flat on her back, her arms straight out at right angles, palms up and unable to move.<p>

It came into view and Olivia could feel her stomach heaving, bile rising in her throat, a terrible taste, the smell of sulfur and fire in her nostrils, and something else, pungent, sweet-smelling in the way that rot often smelled. Here was the fog, but though she couldn't see a solid form in it, she could feel it. Pressing against her. It whispered into her ear, something she couldn't parse but its tone was unmistakable. She'd heard that same sadism and pleasure a thousand other times, every psycho she slapped cuffs on.

She was naked, and couldn't remember if she'd been wearing clothes before but she felt like she would have remembered being naked. She pushed and pulled, willing her arms to move, to summon every ounce of strength she could and _get this monster off of her_, but the struggle wasn't there. Not like pulling against something very heavy, but like trying to move someone else's limbs through sheer force of will. There was no connection. She couldn't.

She couldn't. Even a scream wouldn't leave her lips.

The fog, she realized, was smoke.

It disappeared, dissipating slowly, and for a moment she thought that maybe she had escaped once more. Until she felt it again, pressing against her, substance but no form. And then pain blossomed across her body, inside and out. Splintering her open and engulfing her simultaneously. White-hot sparks against her eyes. Moving and squirming, burning and wet just under her skin, worms and rot eating through her. Something above her again, pressing her down, down, or something pulling her from underneath. Wrapped all around her, suffocating her.

She felt tears, very real and very hot, on her face. She was still, unmoving, on her couch. Nothing else except cheerful voices on TV.

She could move now. But she couldn't.

* * *

><p>He smelled her before he even felt her weight on top of him. Dirt and smoke. The faint scent of blood. She smelled like hell. It terrified him – for a minute he thought he was back there, a fear that had never really left him – and he jolted awake. She gave him no time to react before her lips were on his, and the smell of sulfur and rot seemed to ooze off of her. Heat from her body seeped into him, making him feel feverish and delirious.<p>

The little light that was in the room reflected in the blue of her eyes and made her seem almost beautiful, calmed him in a way that anesthetics would, pushing him down and making him dizzy. But he could still _feel. _He tried to fight the heat and arousal but found that he felt disconnected from his body, couldn't move at all. Just like before, only instead of the feeling of being restrained he felt like he'd been forced out, so that his body was just meat and sweat and nerves.

He was hard, and she held his cock, guided him inside her. The heat became more intense and he was sure this was going to kill him, that he was going to burn and burn and burn. He came inside her and she kept moving her hips, kept drawing spasms out of him, her fingers clawing at his skin. He felt raw, weak. Exhausted, like it had been days since he'd slept.

She looked sated, her eyelids drooping. She leaned down to kiss him again, his lips burning under hers. He closed his eyes, and suddenly the heat drained away from him, the weight was lifted. He heard Sam's voice, panicked and shouting for him to wake up.

He was still exhausted, his muscles aching and lax. He opened his eyes, struggled to look at Sam while he croaked, "Call Olivia." His voice was rough, barely above a whisper. "Make sure she's okay."

His eyes drifted shut again while Sam dialed Olivia's number. It was hard to focus on what Sam was saying, even harder to get anything meaningful from the bits and pieces that he did hear.

He must have been dreaming again, because Castiel was with him but Sam didn't seem to notice. His words became more and more muddled until they didn't sound like words anymore, only meaningless sounds.

"You were attacked," Cas said, leaning down by Dean's bed, looking over him. His eyebrows furrowed, and Dean could tell that Cas was looking for something beneath the surface, something he and Sam might never even be able to find. "Asmodai," he said simply before stepping back.

"What. Did he leave his fucking … his card or some shit?" Dean asked. Even in his half-asleep state, his sentences came in fragments. It was difficult even to draw breath.

"Sometimes he torments his victims just for the sake of it. He's taken something from you." Cas put the palm of his hand to Dean's forehead, and it eased the aching in Dean's muscles, made the fatigue bearable.

"What the hell does that mean? What did he take?"

"He's going to use your semen to impregnate a woman."

Dean needed a moment to come up with a response. "What, he can't get it up anymore?"

"I believe this has always been his method."

"Fuck. The Megan Fox lookalike demon bitch who's really a prince of hell is harvesting my precious bodily fluids," Dean muttered, trying to ignore his escalating distress. He tried to rouse from the dream but Cas said sharply, "No. You need to rest."

"Fuck that. I gotta kill Megan Fox before she breeds an army of half-demon, half-Winchester, half-rape-victim babies."

"You obviously don't realize just how close to death you were, Dean."

"Yeah, well. I've been worse."

"And you've been better. You need to rest. You won't wake up from this sleep until you're fully healed."

"So I'm supposed to leave Sam to deal with this alone?"

"I will help Sam. Rest." With that, Cas put his fingers to Dean's forehead, and that was the end of their argument.


End file.
